


The Road To Legend

by tielan



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Misses Clause Challenge, Post-Movie(s), Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 09:31:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5451818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Fair go</i>, whisper the eddy currents, stirring the sands. <i>Not easy pickings, but a fair go.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Road To Legend

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Selkit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selkit/gifts).



The rig is heavy under her hands and the sky is endless overhead. The guardboys shout to each other from the rig, from the convoys. Sometimes they sing.

Singing is new.

* * *

 

“You’ll take guardboys with you.” Capable turns from the window, the buckle at her shoulder gleaming gold where a thousand fingers have brushed it to swear their oaths. _Brassy,_ whisper the guardboys to each other in their cots. _Brassy but not brazen. That’s how Mother likes us._

The guardboys – formerly known as the warboys – are the reason Furiosa wants away. Well, one of the reasons.

Capable answers her as though she’d spoken, blue eyes frank and direct. “They were bred to be worshippers; they need a god. Better you than him.”

Furiosa’s not so sure of that.

* * *

 

“Immortan,” says the guardboy – Vilos – one of the new ones. He glances at her and checks himself hastily, “My wrong: Imperator. There’s a rider ahead; Gas Town broke-down, pretty small, Cobalt reckons. We helping or hurting?”

Furiosa sees the smudge, does the calculations. A single rig this far out and alone? They’re either fugitives or bait. Under the leadership of the Wives, the Citadel has become the envy of the dust and there’s no shortage of takeover attempts.

 _Fair go,_ whisper the eddy currents through the endless dust of the dead world. _Not easy pickings, but a fair go._

“We help,” she tells Vilos. “Unless they try to hurt us.”

“Gotcha, Immortan. _Imperator,_ ” he corrects himself. As he swings back up along the rig, she hears his mutter, “My wrong.”

* * *

 

“Would you bring me back a jar of dust?”

Furiosa pauses, one hand hovering over the faint silvery ‘fur’ on the nearby leaf. “Dust?”

The Dag turns, light catching the pale ropes of her hair twined up into a circlet around her head – all but one which drapes down over her shoulder and is being gnawed on by the baby girl in the sling against her chest. “From far away. Our soil here isn’t right for certain plants. Other soil might be better.”

 _Da_ _Meetar_ _and her daughter,_ say the guardboys and the Wretched. _Measure of our souls, g_ _rower of the green_ _, mother to the Furiosa Angharad._

* * *

 

The Gas Town rider is rust and welding, small and broke-down, but it’s lasted this long.

Rather like the couple in it – the man terrified but desperate, the woman afraid for him and very heavily pregnant. As Furiosa listens to their story of cruelty and violence and biology and escape, the hot air rising off the sand is suddenly full of ghosts.

The Splendid Angharad’s hand cups the swollen curve of her belly.  _Our sons will_ not _be warlords!_

_Many mothers ago, it was a different world,_ whispers the Valkyrie.  _We had kindness in us, so they say._

_Water,_ Max says over her shoulder.

She gives them water with a simple injunction. “One mouthful, no more.”

* * *

 

The chair swings up with a pull of one stubby hand, a cradle network of wires and levers and pulleys dragging him up. Furiosa meets the sharp gaze of Corpus Callosum – the last living son of Immortan Joe.

“Wondered how long it would take you,” he says in his buzzy voice. “Not much for godhood, eh?”

“It doesn’t suit me.”

“Too bad. You’ve inherited Dad’s mantle.”

She doesn’t like to think of it that way. “The Council—”

“Are the Council. You’re the _Immortan_.” The beady eyes fix on her. “What’ll happen if you go down out there?”

_What happens to all people when they die._ But the memory stirs within her, a Vuvalini saying; “Nothing but my blood to the earth and my bones to the sky.” 

* * *

 

The tiny sack swings from the side mirror, a movement Furiosa’s learned to ignore. The thing inside it isn’t green – not like in the growing spaces of the Citadel – but it clings to life amidst the dust and the desert.

It took some working to tie the rider up to the rig, and the result isn’t great. Not well balanced at all. At least the rider doesn’t have the weight of the guzzoline tank.

_This would be familiar to you,_ the Splendid Angharad’s voice comes from behind Furiosa, and she turns, just as the woman lets out a sharp cry. 

“Oh, mothers of my mother, not now! Wait, littling, wait...”

But there’s no force of man or nature can hold back a birthing.

–

“I wish you’d stay.” The words echo, matter-of-fact in the unexpected silence of the Aqua Cola pumps deep in the bowels of the Citadel. Toast the Knowing wipes her hand on a greasy rag as a half-dozen greaseboys argue over who does the fix, then turns. “Boys! Tentik does it this time. He’s got the smallest hands.”

“You don’t need me here,” Furiosa says, her voice low and clear beneath the cool rock. “None of you do.”

Toast shrugs. “How’s the arm?”

Furiosa lifts it, shows the curl and movement of the fingers. Then she waits as Toast gives it a good grease and a careful rub-over with her rag.

* * *

 

“Imperator! Sighting! Looks enough to be a raiding party, but the gear’s all wrong.”

“Are they on course for the Citadel?”

There’s a silence up on the roof as the guardboys check. Furiosa scans the horizon, seeking the smudges of old revs against the long line of the sun-beaten land, while in the back the newborn emits a whimper as he greedily sucks at his mother’s breast.

“Looks like it.”

She’s already calculating options in her head – escape, evade, or fight. If the raiders are on course to the Citadel, though, they’ll have to fight sooner or later. Furiosa would prefer it was sooner, but—

“New moves,” says Vilos, hanging off the door. “Cactus says new moves – they’re stopping and signalling...”

_No,_ Furiosa thinks, even as her heart stutters,  _Yes_ .

* * *

 

_Immortan Furiosa..._ The Wretched fall back before her and she wants to reach out and grab them, tell them that they’re free, that she’s not worthy of worship.

_Better you than him._

Cheedo is helping carve out the public runnels – channels to catch the water, basins in which to pool it. Toast promises that someday there will be a steady stream of water, without brutal rationing, brutal waste; but right now, they still need to limit what they have; a bowl a day, no more.

When she sees Furiosa and leaves her position along the rockface, there are plenty of Wretched to take up her work.

“It’s coming along,” she says, squinting up at Furiosa, the young face slightly anxious. “You’ll come back?”

“Yes.”

Once they were her charges, under her care. Then they were her ignition spark to leave Immortan Joe and find the home she remembered as a child. Now they’re her anchors to the Citadel – to the hope and belief that they can remake the world after man destroyed it.

So long as she has breath in her body, she’ll return to the Citadel.

* * *

 

They meet on the desert sand, by the rig; less fraught than their first meeting

Although he still has the gun.

“Refugees in the riders,” he tells her, feet planted. “Some supplies.”

“Refugees,” she says, her hand on her hips. “Woman, husband, newborn.”

He blinks in disbelief, his eyes still upon her. “Again?”

“I’m hoping it’s not becoming a pattern.”

That slight tilt at the corners of his mouth: “Could be worse.”

They stand there, untouching, and just look their fill.

* * *

 

The Citadel rejoices at their return.

“Immortan, huh?” Max comments as the songs echo up from the caverns and the dust: _Furiosa’s Ride_.

She jostles him with her shoulder as they lean against the watchpost wall, staring out into the desert.

“Shut up, fool,” she says.


End file.
